A highlights reel from both World Cups
A selection of highs and lows from the recent rugby and cricket showpieces
After getting more spoilt than an Emir’s youngest for the last couple of months, we posh sports aficionados suddenly face the equivalent of a cancelled Christmas.
With the four-yearly rugby and cricket showpieces having been wrenched out of our lives until 2027, the coming weeks look dire. MotoGP and Formula 1 have just concluded. Golf, in its petty, bickering wisdom, has little to occupy willing fans between Majors, and the next of those is in April. International rugby is done until Six Nations time.
The only good news on the immediate horizon is that Test cricket is back in our lives. But even then, it’s Bangladesh hosting New Zealand that must get your blood pulsing. Or Australia hosting…someone other than India. Does it even matter whom? This year’s lambs to the slaughter are Pakistan and – as if the massacre 12 months ago weren’t enough – the West Indies again. The flaw in the plan of only India, Australia and England being allowed to take Tests seriously becomes painfully apparent now: good luck to Cricket Australia trying to sell out a big Australian stadium for a foregone conclusion with the likes of Kraigg Brathwaite as the drawcards – for the second time in the space of a year.
(Trust me, I write pieces for Australia’s international match day programmes, and I’m feeling more of a fraud every year as I disingenuously talk up the opposition. Still, it pays the bills in a way that honest journalism here doesn’t always manage…)
Is there some faint hope that Australia will be caught napping after an incredibly long year on the road and a World Cup comedown? You’d like to think it, but then you remember that any advantage there is cancelled out by the tourists hardly ever getting to play Tests themselves, and tour matches barely being a thing any more. Just imagine Pakistan or the Windies turning up for the first encounter off the back of three games against strong Sheffield Shield sides, whilst the Aussies have only just staggered off the plane? Now that would make it interesting. You might even call it common sense, backed by a long history and tradition. But cricket’s administrators know better, of course.
If you can wait until the festive season, then India touring South Africa will provide some entertainment worth watching. A Test series win there remains the unscratched itch for the Indians, who let it slip from 1-0 up on their pandemic visit. This time, cunningly, they’ve cut things down to two Tests. So if they let an early lead slip through their fingers again, at least they’ll have a drawn series. That second Test will be at Newlands, the first Cape Town New Year’s Test with spectators since before Covid and SA20 times. I’m curious to see whether a city that has always turned out for the longest format will do so after this regrettable break in tradition.
Anyway, what I really wanted to do today, in the light of the upcoming droughts, was squeeze a little more entertainment out of the cricket and rugby world cups with a good old highlights and lowlights reel.
Photo: CWC official website
Rugby & Cricket World Cups 2023: The highlights
The RWC quarter-finals weekend
When the last eight face off at the RWC, you already know you’re settling in for the international rugby fan’s four-yearly highlight. The semis and the finals may be more important, but nothing can match quarters weekend for sheer quantity of high-intensity Test match rugby. That much we already knew. But what Ireland versus New Zealand and then France versus South Africa delivered in terms of quality will be very hard to match as a complete weekend package – ever. What may stay with me longest was Jack Conan crashing upfield (multiple times) minus his boot in that desperate, 37-phase last throw of the dice by the Irish. No surprises that both finalists featured in the two standout games.
South Africa v Ireland
A pool game that would have made a worthy final. Nothing whatsoever like the aforementioned quarters, but barely any less entertaining despite its low-scoring nature. Ireland’s win in Paris, against a team that turned out not to have picked a goal-kicker, was a treat for rugby strategists. And another reminder of why rugby union is such an endlessly fascinating sport: there are innumerable ways to go about scoring points and winning matches. The way Ireland managed their game that night, particularly given that their lineout started out looking as broken as the Springbok goal-kicking, left me feeling certain that this was going to be their year. If Andy Farrell had coached a winning machine to which even Rassie Erasmus had to bow, then the Irish were going all the way. That New Zealand turned out to have other ideas is all you need to know about why I watch unscripted sport, not movies.
Portugal beats Fiji
Quite simply a glorious day for rugby. We’ll get to Fiji in a bit, but any time an unheralded nation can print its name on the rugby map, we’re obliged to stand back and celebrate. It’s far too rare an occasion. Let’s remember that (supposed) mismatches like this one only really happen at World Cups. They make all the actual mismatches worthwhile, too – and give the teams that really did get routed hope for next time.
Glenn Maxwell’s innings
Ben Stokes may just have to shift on over when it comes to the conversation about the best innings seen in cricket history – never mind which format. Whichever commentator it was that said ‘This should not be possible’ of Maxwell’s match-winning, undefeated, one-legged 201 against Afghanistan had it spot on. Forget mere mortals: not even his fellow elite cricketers could fathom how he did it. The result didn’t matter to the league table, but in the context of a match that every non-Australian on the planet would have been tuning into in the hopes of seeing one of the great upsets, Maxwell was box office. Speaking of which, why don’t they show live sports in cinemas?
Australia’s bowling and fielding in the knockouts
Ravi Shastri and the screaming masses can froth away about the number of tournament sixes all they like, but the semi-finals of the CWC were a reminder that things can get a lot cagier when the real pressure’s on. Australia’s semi-final against South Africa and final against India were both low-scoring affairs in the context of the tournament. Little things inside the circle, like bowling and fielding, started to matter more than whether the tea vendor working Row Q took a clean catch or not. And the Aussies did those things splendidly. Fielding first in both games, they made sure their opposition scored no more than 212 and 240 respectively. Say what you like about South Africa and India failing to handle the pressure, but Australia were immense up front in both of those games. Their pacers – especially Starc and Hazlewood against the Proteas – brought their Test match finest. And their fielders, sketchy though they were early in the tournament, brought that pressure to unbearable levels with some of the most miserly blocking any of us can remember. A significant number of fours became dots, and it’s easy to underestimate the role that played. I’m inclined to say Australia won this World Cup rather than India or South Africa losing it.
The RWC opening ceremony
I’m surprising myself with this one, because like any good, cynical sports journalist, I don’t normally give a pangolin’s whiskers about opening or closing ceremonies. But then there’s the rule that was written the moment that flaming arrow hit its target at Barcelona in 1992 – YouTube that year’s Summer Olympics opening ceremony if you’re too young – that allowances must be made for the exceptional. So it’s berets off to the French for coming up with the scenes of everyday French life that were central to the performance. Yes, there were surely a fair few clichés in there. But hey, the French invented the word so maybe that’s fine. It was something a bit different from fireworks, flag-waving and line-dancing, so I say encore!
The bunker system
We need to get one thing straight: there’s always going to be subjectivity and debate around the application of foul play rules in rugby. We have to live with that. What we can do is try to take the emotion out of decision-making as much as possible, and remove the added pressure of thousands of people screaming at the referee for this or that call to be made. The bunker system does exactly that by letting everybody concerned take a step back and calm down before a red card is shown. It also means play can continue quick-smart. Whether certain actions warrant reds is a separate debate, but as far as applying the rules as they stand in the fairest possible way goes, the bunker system was a win.
Afghanistan & The Netherlands
The fact that Afghanistan and the Netherlands were considered serious and legitimate opposition by all teams by the end of the tournament made the 10-team format a reasonable success in 2023. The Afghanistan narrative was key to a steady build in interest as the group phase wore on. They ended a solid sixth on the table and, barring Glenn Maxwell’s heroics (see above), would have been a Net Run Rate calculation away from snatching New Zealand’s semi-final spot. The motley Dutch crew did prop up the log in the end, but took victories over Bangladesh and South Africa. The work of this tournament’s two ‘minnows’ means we’ve all got to sit up and take notice of what’s happening in qualifying next time around. Which is good news for cricket’s showpiece, I guess.
Everything else Fiji
The Portugal defeat was just so Fiji, wasn’t it? They didn’t turn up to play the Iberians that day, but when you put a recognised rugby nation in front of them, they played their hearts out, The bigger the scalp on offer, the better they played. They became the obvious choice for everyone’s second-favourite side, and reaped love in much the same way as they had in the last French World Cup in 2007. What did change from previous tournaments was their prowess in the more technical aspects of rugby union. Breakdowns, scrums and goalkicking, for example. No longer was it just about throwing the ball around as only Fijians can. The best example was in their opening match, against Wales. A game I believe they would have won without one of the most inexplicably two-faced refereeing performances at the Rugby World Cup. Toppling Australia a week on went some way to making up for it, but it was a shame they couldn’t carry the all-round intensity into the quarters that came along so much later. The coaching challenge for Fiji going forward will be to keep growing the technical side without squashing the players’ legendary natural creativity. If they can just develop a Kiwi-style instinct for when (and when not) to turn on the gas out wide, they could be a winning machine.
Photo: Rugby World Cup official website
Rugby & Cricket World Cups 2023: The lowlights
Same Cane’s red card
I know, consistency and all that. And yes, I’m South African so I ought to be toasting the referees’ panel. But no: this RWC final victory had a slightly hollow feel to it compared to some of the others. Because you just don’t want to win against 14 players. You don’t want your opposition to have any stick with which to beat your victory - as England did with the Mark Cueto touchline call in 2007. (The other relatively hollow win, for exactly that reason.) And I still ask the question: do we need foul play to be dealt with in the match itself? Because unless you injure the other player, you don’t usually gain an advantage for foul play. Could a penalty be enough punishment in the moment, and any further action come in the form of fines or bans? I know it’s a much bigger debate with many a point that could be made, but I think it’s one worth having.
England versus South Africa
The reckoning for the epic RWC quarter-final weekend landed with a thud on semi-final weekend. This was expected ever since the draw was announced, of course, but a damp England versus South Africa encounter really went the extra mile to make a terrible advert for rugby. As luck would have it, this was the first time I convinced my (Austrian) girlfriend to sit down and attempt to watch a rugby match. But it wasn’t even half-time before she grew tired of asking, “And why are they stopping again? What happened now? Why does the referee do more than the players?” and wandered off. I couldn’t blame her one bit. I’d have done the same if it hadn’t been a match of such enormous consequence. Of course, games like this must be accepted if we want a sport with so many strategic possibilities and so much variety, so I can live with them. Still, it was a graphic illustration of how catching the wrong game at the wrong time could really lose the sport a potential fan forever.
Turnouts at early CWC games
The early encounters at the Cricket World Cup were just plain sad. Miserable affairs in largely empty arenas. For those of us who were watching the sharp end of the Rugby World Cup in parallel when the tournaments overlapped, the stark contrast was not a good look for cricket. I don’t profess to have investigated all the reasons why turnouts were quite so dire for the earliest games – and to some degree any games that didn’t feature India. But if the fact that it’s hard to invest in such a long tournament from ball one played any kind of role, then maybe it’s time to acknowledge that and consider smaller stadiums in the beginning? I’d have thought going to some exotic small-town venues in the first couple of weeks might add some interest for the watching world. Besides showcasing the host country more broadly, it would also be a once-in-a-lifetime show for the locals. Better than looking at (or playing in) and empty concrete bowl, I think?
Ravi Shastri’s shouting
I know this is old-man talk and I’m doomed to lose, but if there’s one thing I hate at a sports match, its some idiot trying to whip a receptive public up into a frenzy like it’s a mass gathering of the Mississipi Baptists. Especially if that idiot is the swaggering, shouting Ravi Shastri. I’ve never met the man, but his ego has a way of transcending continents and poisoning your television set (specifically during the semi-final in Mumbai). Worse yet, the muppets in the stands respond to all this, waving their phones when they’re told to and so forth. It makes me weep for humanity, this forced ‘engagement’. The whole point of going to a live sports match is that the show itself has its own unscripted intrigue. It generates its own atmosphere and moments in a way some wannabe Vegas showman never could. Even its silences can be pregnant; an integral part of building tension. Can we not just leave it at that?
Damn water boys
Earlier this year, I wrote in praise of certain time-saving measures that were introduced to Test rugby in the Six Nations. While there’s no doubt that these are still making games snappier than they might be, things definitely seemed to regress as the Rugby World Cup wore on. Even making allowances for the intensity of the knockouts, the custom of yellow bibs automatically breaching the field any time a scrum was called seemed to return with a vengeance towards the end of the tournament. Sadly, a culture of getting away with it still seems to be trumping a culture of getting on with it. So referees and World Rugby need to send the message even louder. Cynical time-wasting and message-sending tactics may even need to be punished in the form of penalties, and not just a la Mathieu Raynal in Melbourne last year.
The Wallabies
Australia doesn’t have the world’s most popular rugby side these days. And South Africa has a particular beef with them, admittedly fuelled by the Wallabies’ insistence on pulling out a performance when hosting the Boks, no matter how bad their form seems to be. (More on that in the letter I wrote for Jacques Nienaber last year.) All of which brews an element of Schadenfreude around the subject of their abject Rugby World Cup exit. Still, putting it down is a lowlight must be the right and proper thing to do. Australia are, after all, double former World Champions. Still, my abiding thought is that those victories and so many others were the result of some astronomical over-achievement for what is a niche sport in their country. For the third football code in a nation, which is only taken seriously in a few scattered suburbs and schools, aren’t the results in France all anyone should really expect?